Fold is a Bitcoin (Lightning) rewards debit card and shopping app for iOS and Android. It offers Bitcoin back on purchases with select brands from Gap to Papa John's.
Here's the catch, though: most of those brands have only partnered with Fold in North America and I'm in the UK, which means I've never been able to make full use of the app. I'm hardly likely to have a pizza delivered across the Atlantic!
But there is one feature of Fold that is open to all users - and that's the Daily Spin. Every 20 hours, you can spin a wheel in the app to win free sats or other prizes:
Plus, spin the wheel seven days in a row and you are awarded an extra 250 sats:
I've built Fold into my daily routine, and over nine months of use I've accumulated 16,000 sats (my best month was June 2021, with 2,930 sats). That might not sound a lot, but it takes five seconds a day to spin that wheel so I don't mind at all.
Minimum withdrawal
There's always a downside, and in Fold's case that's a minimum withdrawal of 50,000 sats. Now if I was using Fold's other features too I'm sure I'd reach that target quite quickly, but as I'm relying on the spin wheel exclusively then I'm looking at more than two years. Unless, of course, I hit one of the big prizes - the biggest at the moment being a whopping one million sats.
I'm a man with a (long-term) plan, so I don't mind at all. But recently I hit a technical glitch with the Fold app, so I decided to check for updates. Surprisingly it didn't show up in the app store, and when I tried a direct link I got this error:
"App not available - this app is currently not available in your country or region." That was weird. I checked on Fold's website and it suggested the UK was still a supported market, at least in a limited fashion:
So I sent Fold a support request:
Hi Fold
I'm a UK-based user of the Fold app. I can no longer update the app because the Apple App Store tells me "this app is currently not available in your country or region".
I understand that Fold has only ever supported a few brands in the UK, but now it seems that Fold no longer supports the UK at all. Is this the case? If so, how can I retrieve the 15,000 sats that I have accumulated over the past year or so?
Thanks
A couple of days later they came back with:
Hey,
We appreciate the enthusiasm and support for Fold!
Right now, as a Bitcoin focused company, we are subject to very strict regulations. This means our app or services are not allowed in many countries outside the US. As we continue to grow, and Bitcoin becomes more widely accepted, we certainly hope to expand into your region.
Be sure to join our social media channels, Twitter and Discord, to be one of the first to know when we launch in new areas.
Your sats will remain attached to your account, which is still active. We are just not able to offer the app or updates in your country.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, Fold did respond to my support request pretty quickly - and I am glad my account will remain active. On the other hand, the responsible thing to do would be to allow users in non-supported markets to withdraw their sats even if they hadn't reached the 50,000 sat minimum. It's done over Bitcoin Lightning, after all, so would cost Fold pennies.
That aside, there's also a mismatch between the information on the Fold website and the information that Fold support is giving out.
I still have the app installed on my phone, and for the time being I can continue to spin the wheel (despite those "very strict regulations"). But as I'm no longer able to update the app, it will at some point stop working entirely for me. And I'm sure that's going to happen before I get to 50,000 sats. So I'll have to leave my accumulated sats in limbo until Fold focuses on the UK in future.
I hope this has been useful to any other Fold users in the UK, or perhaps in other countries around the world, who are wondering why they can't update their app.
And if you're in North America and you'd like to get Fold for yourself, my link is: https://use.foldapp.com/r/MKHRVW7L. I suppose any referrals will increase my odds of getting to 50K from 'impossible' to 'improbable'! Or maybe I should give quit now. As Kenny Rogers (who was definitely not British) sang:
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to Fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
